Tag Archives: Children

I’ve made it. We’ve made it. We’ve made it to the End of Term, we’ve dragged ourselves out of bed and into work and school before the sun was properly awake and returned home, picked our way through the fairy-lit dark, long after it had gone to bed for what feels like weeks. Everything about us was increasingly reluctant the further we advanced into December and the closer we got to the End Date and finally it is here. The children, exhausted by the effort of an eight-week term, have taken themselves off to bed early.

In a short few weeks, I don’t suppose I should refer to them as children any more, here or anywhere else. Next month, S will be 18, technically a fully-fledged man. L will enter her teens. I will be one year closer to fifty (as will everyone else under fifty, I guess) and I am considerably greyer now than I was this time last year. Time, that constantly stretching, elastic beast, for all the eternal sense of the first night of the holidays, is speeding up.

When people ask me about my children, they no longer comment that I must have my hands full. I guess it must be obvious after all these years, but now, they are far more likely to give the knowing chuckle reserved for Mother of Teens than the rueful smile of Tired with Toddlers.

But here’s the thing. My house isn’t like other houses. My tribe of teens is led by someone different. I’ve noticed it before, when other people’s children came to play, but now I see it strongly reflected in my own. Here, it’s OK to be seventeen and still, somehow, see Father Christmas as a statement of fact, not one of wishful fantasy. It’s fine to want a ‘boy band’ haircut and unselfconsciously take a trip down memory lane with Rosie and Jim. Here, the presence of a big brother with Down’s syndrome allows you to be young, to be who you are, a mixture of heartbreaking innocence and slow awakening, to take your time in growing up.

When I explain that my son has Down’s syndrome to strangers or to new friends, so often the response is, if not sadness, then sympathy. Too often, we are so busy counting the deficits that we neglect to count the blessings.

Happy Christmas.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

I’ve been reflecting recently on our decision to send S to a special school. At the time, it was a no brainer. The moment we walked in and the headteacher said to us, “of course, you do understand that he won’t have his own 1-1 TA,” we knew we had come to the right place. S, of course, preferred the mainstream school next door, where the room he had explored had computers that came up out of the desks. He was, I am sure, convinced that every day there would be a day of games and play, while everyone around him smiled and told him how cute he was (he was, still is, if I may say so myself).

We had been thinking about which school he should attend for some time; when I say ‘breaking my heart over it’ I don’t think it would be an exaggeration. In the world of Down’s syndrome parenting, whether or not your child goes to a specialist school or a mainstream one is a major point of debate. After a diagnosis experience still common to many, I believe, one of sad, solemn faces, apologies and the vague, unspoken inference that the baby you hold in your arms doesn’t measure up, is some sort of alternative, inferior creature, the inclusion of disabled children in mainstream institutions such as schools goes a long way to healing this wound. What would sending our son to a special school say about how we saw him? Would it mean that we were giving up? That he, and we, were failures?

And, like all parents, we worried about who his friends would be. In a mainstream setting, my experience as a teacher rang warning bells. Would he spend his school days swilling around in bottom sets, with all that that entails? Or out in the corridor, present but isolated? Would he be able to spend time with the children he would learn the best habits from – or would he be forever out of their way, removed from them by either the presence of a permanent TA or the effects of setting? If he went down the special school route, what would he be learning from the other children there? Shouldn’t he be with typical kids and learning typical things from them? It was a spiral of indecision and I’m glad that one visit settled the matter. We walked in, had a look around and all our doubts and worries fell away. He would be OK, and that school would do a good job.

I guess the thing that I am stumbling towards is the thing that I, as the mother of a disabled child, forgot, and the thing that people who do not have disabled children often mention (and which I, up until recently, have dismissed out of hand as patronising); that spending time with disabled people, or in this case, disabled children, is good for us, that we learn things, all sorts of things, by doing so.

I had always seen this in terms of the typical population, and underneath my skin-deep agreement there was always the resentment; that my son isn’t here as an object lesson in learning to be patient (or something) for other people. That he isn’t an inspiration lesson and that he exists, just as himself, and that is exactly how it should be.

But.

I forgot something, and I forgot something important.

I forgot that, as much as he could learn from typical people, he could learn from disabled people too. He could learn to accept his own difference, by accepting it in others; he could learn to transcend that strange kind of narcissism that assails a person who has a lot of attention, all fixed on them, you know, the appointments, the meetings, the endless, endless questions about what he wants and how he likes to be helped. He could learn to be the one who helps, and be empowered by doing so. I forgot that all the benefits of being educated with disabled young people were true for him too – a disabled young person. I forgot that it wasn’t one way.

It’s a good thing education’s a long game, or I’d be jiggered, frankly.

Share this:

Like this:

When I was a little girl I got involved in stuff a lot. I wouldn’t say that I was a joiner-in particularly, but when I look back, and count up the activities I did as a young person, it comes to quite a lot, especially when you consider I grew up in a Devon valley ten miles away from anywhere. For a small village, there was a lot going on, from amateur dramatics (adults and children) to gymnastics. The only fly in the ointment (for me, anyway, other children had differently inclined parents) was that if it didn’t happen in the village, it wasn’t happening for me. Hence, any dreams I had of being an ballerina or ice dance champion were dashed.

I started gymnastics when I was six or seven. As it was not long after the end of my four month hospital stay and I was a bag of bones with a red-raw operation scar that went half way round my back (still does, but it’s not red-raw) my parents were, understandably, somewhat anxious about it. I was put in my sister’s group, and she took care of me (or, as I saw it, bossed me about and made me be her partner – she took her role seriously, I guess), and made sure I didn’t hurt myself or wear myself out. I kept going until I was about 12 or 13, my lack of strength preventing me from being much good, but not from enjoying myself thoroughly, even though I could never manage to land on my feet after a handspring and my walkovers went one way but not the other.

Am-drams were similarly long-standing. One of my earliest memories was a rehearsal in the back room of Mrs Hughes’ house (she had so many children, I was never quite sure who they were or how many). I had somehow found myself in the group that were somehow baddies. I burst into tears and had to be moved, even though they came good and won out in the end. Costumes always seemed to involve nylon tights (yuck) and backstage was a wonderful gloryhole of rooms stacked with trestle tables that must have been born before the war. My favourite role was ‘Punch’, where my friend Kay and I got to hit each other with pipe insulation. The worst was when I had to wear an itchy leotard that was supposed to be my friend Carla’s costume.

The clubs were always filled with the same people (we all had similar parents, apart from Sophie, who gave up gym for dancing). Amy came with me to gym and drama. Kay to drama and Sunday School. My mum used to run the Sunday school with Mrs Hughes (who ran the Junior Players) and Mrs Freshney (who ran the holiday club with Mrs Hughes andmy mum), which meant that I didn’t have much choice in going or not (my dad was the man who Washed the Car on Sunday mornings) (not that I minded, I hasten to point out, I was more than happy to go). She used to make the booklets by spreading the individual pages out all over the sitting room floor. Kay and I used to giggle together, and I remained fascinated by the Chinese-style wallpaper in the vicar’s toilet for years, that and the open cistern, for years.

Actually, now I come to think about it, the reason I got so involved was no doubt directly related to my parents. My dad was on the organising committee of the gym club AND the PTA (until he fell out with the headmaster over the spelling of ‘barbqueue’). Along with a go-getty set of parents who ran the sort of clubs they knew their children would enjoy, they provided for us a range of out of school activities that certainly kept us busy and enriched our lives at the same time. When it came to my turn, and my children started nursery and Sunday School and football and scouts, naturally, I thought that I would do the same.

Except, I didn’t. I volunteered for the committee of this, that and the other, and even went to a few meetings, took my turn with a few teas, but, somehow, I couldn’t keep it up. At first I thought it was the new baby thing. Having three young children saps the energy of the youngest and fittest of mothers, so I thought it might be that. Next, I thought it was the fundraising thing. I have mixed feelings about fund raising (and very firm views on cake sales), or meetings and endless circular discussions. But, somehow, other women with more children than me seemed to manage. Other women who were equally busy, or impatient with group decisions seemed to get along just fine. They ran the committee and baked and sewed, raising large amounts of money for a variety of projects as they went along, cheerfully giving of themselves to the community and I…couldn’t.

It took me a while to figure it out. It took me a while to discover things like ‘mental load’ and capacity and how this is different for everyone and how when there is disability in the family, everything is magnified.

So now, when I see something about inclusive church, or business start-ups for learning disabled people, or personal budgets or anything else that sounds like a great idea if only it happened near to where I live, I smile sadly to myself (or scowl, depending on which side of the smile you happen to be) and sigh and know that what the answer will be to any number of good ideas.

‘Here’s an email address.’

‘Here’s a website.’

‘You make it happen.’

And, like every other time before, I drift away, disappointed. Having a good idea is great and all, but unless you have other people around you who have the capacity to turn your idea into something real, unless you have someone around who can make it happen, that’s all it will ever be. Without capacity, it will only ever be a pipe dream.

Share this:

Like this:

One of the things I have been struggling with lately is the notion of myself as a carer. It’s very strange. I remember, when I was expecting my beloved first-born, the very idea of me being the parent, the mother to another person, was astonishing. When he first arrived, a tiny bundle with a home-made hat, safely contained within the hospital Tupperware, there was a suspended time when I looked at him (and to be fair, I repeated the experience a further two times) and wondered what he had to do with me, and what I was supposed to do – and supposed to feel.

At the time, it was one of the things that disturbed me; this idea that I should instantly ‘fall in love’ with my child, as if motherhood, and all it entails, was supposed to come easily, that it was somehow as natural as falling off a log. (‘Cos you know, there’s a lot of falling off logs that goes on in day-to-day life.)

When you think about it, there’s a whole lot of things that mothers are under societal pressure to somehow find a doddle, a pleasure even. Breast feeding. Home-made purees. Broken nights. The wiping of bottoms, noses and sick. Constant laundry. Tidying up after everyone else. The pressure is on to make you feel as if you should Enjoy Every Moment and if you don’t, then there must be something wrong with you. You’re not a Real Woman, or you’re a Bad Mother, you can’t cope or something.

The hardest thing for me, though, is not that we should enjoy this process but that, somehow, the expectation that we should do all of this on our own. We are already isolated, working hard, paying the ginormous mortgage, travelling to work, to and fro, in our little metal boxes. We have separated out work and home, spheres with edges that kiss, but only in the evenings. And it’s not just our personal lives. Apparently there is no “I” in team, but even the seemingly most collaborative, collegiate of professions (teaching, the one I know the most about it has to be said) are increasingly set in the ways of individual competition.

You know, this is where I think we have got it wrong. Bringing up a family, the next generation, no matter how we might construct it, or what our role in it, personal or professional, is not the sort of thing you can do on your own. You need your friends, your wider family, your colleagues, around you. You need the people who are supposed to be supporting you to join you, not to sit in judgement, or complain that you didn’t stick to the plan, or that you are somehow less or shamed because you actually admitted that you needed help.

We can’t do it on our own and that’s OK.

Share this:

Like this:

There’s nothing quite like the successful student in the successful school to give all the adults associated with them the satisfied glow of a job well done. Follow these simple steps, and you, too, could be bathing in the reflected glory of your progeny.

Ingredients

One ten-to-eleven year old child
One teacher
One set of end of key stage tests
One set of standards (variable)
Advice/guidance (to taste)
One league table
One performance management tool, named, ‘performance related’

Method

First you must persuade the ten-to-eleven year old child that the end of key stage tests are important, the culmination of everything they have worked towards for the last seven years, and will have long-reaching ramifications on their lives. You can do this by mentioning it at every given opportunity, together with reminders about behaviour and admonitions to work harder*.

Next, you must impress upon the teacher the importance of the end of key stage tests by engaging them through the skillful mixing of league tables and performance management.

Finally, season with standards (variable) and advice/guidance (to taste) until you have your preferred mixture.

Set the temperature to early summer, place all ten-to-eleven year olds in the same room at different tables and make them work in silence all morning and all afternoon.

You will know when you have achieved success when the ten-to-eleven year old child has a dead-eyed expression, a sulky mouth, displays no enthusiasm for reading or writing at all, and cries at the mention of fractions. If you are particularly successful, they may even have the slow, tired demeanour of one who is not sleeping due to worry.

If your ten-to-eleven year old child is not quite ready for success by the second week in May, you can try holiday and/or Saturday school/catch up sessions. Make sure you do these in advance of Easter for best results.

Remember, we all want the best for our children, and nothing quite beats the experience of success.